Column: Why do we find ourselves in this healthcare pickle?

Cheryl A. Pass

Wednesday

Nov 20, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 20, 2013 at 10:11 PM

People forget that government is coercion - force at the point of a gun. A model for the Obamacare law can be found in the federal seat belt law, requiring car manufacturers to install seat belts in every car ... just as the Obamacare law requires insurance companies to insert Obama’s requirements into your health insurance policy, but this time using the IRS to enforce the law.

In 1968, there was national debate on whether the federal government had the authority to force you to wear a seat belt and if the federal government had the authority to force automakers to only sell cars with seat belts installed. The federal government cannot force you to wear a seat belt by law, but did force automakers to install them.

What the federal government did next regarding seat belts was threaten more legislation to force automakers into installing passive restraints /air bags. The idea was that if air bags were installed, seat belts would no longer be necessary, quelling the debate. Automakers rebelled and said passive restraints would push the price of cars out of reach for most consumers. Automakers, at the behest of the Department of Transportation, then lobbied state governments to pass seat belt laws, forcing drivers and passengers to be fined if caught not wearing a seat belt. Supposedly, if the automakers did this, the passive restraints would not become mandatory.

Guess what? The federal government proceeded to make air bags mandatory anyway. The cost of cars has escalated greatly, just as health insurance is escalating now. Automakers and states complied. Federal transportation money is now dependent on state seat belt laws. The federal government did not pass mandatory seat belt laws just so you could have a choice in the matter.

Besides the financial burden, “Seat-belt laws infringe a person’s rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“While seat-belt use might save some people in certain kinds of traffic accidents, there is ample evidence that in other kinds, people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because they used seat belts. Some people have been saved from death in certain kinds of accidents only because a seat belt was not used. In those cases, the malicious nature of seat-belt laws is further revealed: such persons are subject to fines for not dying in the accident while using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians.”

Sound familiar? Replace car manufacturers with insurance companies. Obamacare has mandated what insurance companies must and must not provide, selling health insurance policies through federal force. Some will benefit, but others will suffer. Since 1968, Congress has had a jolly time of it mandating standards for nearly every other product you might purchase. The unconstitutional precedent was set. Now, a step further, you are forced to buy that product. If you have any respect for being American and for the U.S. Constitution, you realize the federal government has no legitimate role to play in any of these areas of the market.

Just as automakers were vilified if they balked at federal mandates, insurance companies have been vilified if they dare to fight Obamacare. Just as automakers capitulated, the insurance companies got on board with the feds and tried to comply. They had no choice in the matter if they wanted to survive.

Now Obama is making them the scapegoat for his failing program as he moves closer to his stated goal of single-payer socialist healthcare. Someone tell me, what can Obama know about your personal healthcare that you would give him the right to dictate to you what you need or want in health insurance? Same question of DC bureaucrats and politicians who love to say the word, “choice.” What will your doctor or hospital be allowed to do? What choice will you have?

Well, there is the pickle. You might like seat belts, but free market demand could have determined that. As long as you are willing to give government power over your personal decisions about your life, what products you must buy or offer, the American promise of freedom, economic or otherwise, is shot to hell. This is a pickle I didn’t “choose” to be forced to eat.

Pass is a resident of Gastonia.

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